Cellular (cell) telephones with built-in cameras are well known and widely used. Such phones permit taking a photograph and storing it within the phone. Then, the photograph can be transmitted to a user's e-mail mail box as an attachment using well-known technology of transmitting image data via cellular telephony. Further, it is known to include in a cell phone a relatively powerful processor and related electronics which are capable of supporting a variety of applications.
However, a cell phone—camera—email combination has not been effectively utilized for applications outside of capturing and transmitting photographs. For example, it would be desirable to capture business cards, text documents, forms, hand-written notes and other business, technical, or specialized documents and provide them to a user in a convenient format consistent with the nature of the document. For example, it would be desirable to use a cell phone to capture a business card and provide it to the user as interpreted data suitable for entry into user's computerized contact organizer. Similarly, it would be useful to capture a document and provide it to the user as recognized text, or to capture handwritten notes and provide them to the user as a text document.
Although technologies exist for storing business cards, performing optical character recognition (OCR) and handwriting recognition (ICR), such technologies have not been effectively combined with cellular imaging applications. Since professionals spend significant time away from their offices, their most readily accessible communications tool is a cellular telephone. Thus, it is valuable to adapt a cell phone with a camera to the needs of professionals and business people. For example, a professional may find it highly useful to capture a business card received at a convention using her cell phone and transfer it in an interpreted form to her e-mail account. Likewise, it would be useful to transmit notes generated at an out-of-the-office meeting to user's e-mail mail box as text immediately after the meeting.
Thus, despite the availability of many technological components, technology is still lacking for many applications for business and professional users of cell phones. Such users may need specialized processing of various types of information which is generally referred to herein as documents or professional information.